Rick Holmes: For Democrats, next stop Worcester

This weekend, the Democrats' campaigns move out of the living rooms of insiders and activists, and into the attention of ordinary voters. At least they hope so.

Rick Holmes

This weekend, the Democrats’ campaigns move out of the living rooms of insiders and activists, and into the attention of ordinary voters. At least they hope so.

For more than a year, the five Democrats running for governor have been pitching their candidacies to a small sliver of the electorate: Democrats likely to come out to the party caucuses in February and early March. They’ve had coffee and wine with Democratic Town Committee members from Williamstown to Wellfleet; they’ve had intimate chats with state reps, union leaders and people who hold no office but are considered influential.

All those private, small-group auditions, and the organization-building that goes with them, were aimed at getting delegates committed in the caucuses. From there, the candidates’ target audience gets narrowed even further, to a few thousand uncommitted delegates.

If you are one of those delegates, you probably can name all five candidates for governor. You’ve probably chatted with each, at least once. If you’re an ordinary voter, you’re probably able to name Attorney General Martha Coakley, and maybe Treasurer Steve Grossman. As for the other three, hmmm. Can you give me a clue?

For the record, they are Juliette Kayyem, Don Berwick and Joe Avellone.

The beauty of the living room process is that lesser known, underfunded candidates like these can build support one conversation at a time, through charisma, ideological purity and grassroots organization. That’s how Deval Patrick, nearly unknown when he first announced for governor, blew away the competition in the 2006 caucuses and convention.

That appears not to have happened this time around. Kayyem’s personal energy has impressed some Democrats. Berwick has appealed to some on ideological grounds, loudly backing single-payer health care and opposing casinos. Avellone’s economic development message is better geared toward a general election campaign, though he’s tried to make inroads in the state’s struggling “Gateway Cities.”

But there’s been no great wave of grassroots enthusiasm for anyone coming out of the caucuses, so the speculation going into this weekend’s convention in Worcester is a familiar numbers game: Which of the five will get the 15 percent of delegates required for a spot on the primary ballot?

Grossman, who most concede won the organizational test of the caucuses, and Coakley are considered a lock. If one or more of the second-tier candidates makes 15 percent, expect lots of talk about games and strategy. Did Grossman or Coakley throw some needed delegates an opponent to get a third candidate on the ballot? Which of the frontrunners will be helped or hurt by a larger field? Since the mayor of Boston is traditionally the kingmaker in Democratic state politics, what role will Marty Walsh play in this drama?

That political thicket surrounds the governor’s race. Even further removed from the public’s gaze are the campaigns and maneuvers for other races between Democrats: Two strong candidates for attorney general will make it to the primary, but it’s likely that one or more of the four running for lieutenant governor and the three running for treasurer won’t survive Worcester.

Whether any candidate gets a post-convention bounce will also be a topic of speculation, but there will be no conclusive answers until a larger subset of the electorate — registered Democrats — votes in the September primary.

Not everyone is thrilled with this process. “There’s a million Democrats out there who are going to be very disaffected if they don’t have candidates that offer more than the spectrum of maybe two insiders that have been running for a decade,” Avellone complained at a debate last week, which doesn’t sound like he’s expecting to make it to the next round.

The long road to Election Day — from living rooms, to caucus rooms, to the convention floor, a summer of campaigning and a primary that produces candidates with a large advantage going into the general election — may not be the most (small-d) democratic. It empowers incumbents, insiders and activists, leaving independent centrist voters out of the process until the final act. But for (big-d) Democrats, who’ve dominated the state for generations, it seems to work.

Now, a promotional note: This week, we are launching MassPoliticalNews.com, a collaboration of more than 100 Massachusetts newspapers owned and managed by GateHouse Media New England. This project features a website that will bring together campaign coverage from newspapers across eastern Massachusetts, along with information voters need and opinions written by journalists, candidates and readers from across the political spectrum — including this weekly campaign view column.

We hope you’ll join us for the long ride down the campaign trail.

Rick Holmes is editor of MassPoliticalNews.com and opinion editor for the MetroWest Daily News. Visit MPN online and follow on Twitter @MassPoliNews.